In the nursery industry, plants are initially grown in arrays of small compartments within plastic trays. The small compartment size fully accommodates the plant in the early stages of its development while economically making use of the limited space available within a greenhouse or other nursery building. Once the seedlings have germinated and have approached the maximum size desirable in the small germination compartments, each seedling must be transplanted to a larger pot for further growth and eventual outdoor planting or commercial sale.
The roots of the seedlings will typically form a compact block with the soil contained within the germination compartments, which allows the seedling and the associated soil to be transplanted as a unit. Typically, seedlings have been transplanted by hand into pots prefilled with soil. Hand transplanting allows seedlings to be easily transplanted from seedling arrays of any configuration to single pots or, more commonly, arrays of pots contained within a unitizing flat. However, the high cost of labor and the seasonal nature of transplanting work has made this method undesirable.
Automatic transplanters are known which utilize specially fabricated seedling flats which permit the seedlings to be pressed through the base of a germination compartment into a pot located below. Other known transplanters use cam-driven rotating pairs of plate-like fingers to extract the seedlings, or utilize pre-bent metallic wire fingers which are retained in a straight configuration and injected into the soil surrounding the seedling. It is known to move the germinating tray on an indexable table with respect to the transplanting head of the apparatus.
What is needed is an apparatus of sturdy construction which may readily accommodate germinating trays of varying array dimensions, and which will rapidly transplant seedlings to pot arrays of a desired configuration.